


On Providence

by Vaznetti



Category: Lymond Chronicles - Dorothy Dunnett, Oxford Time Travel Universe - Connie Willis
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Colin's single-minded obsession with Polly, Gen, Samuel Harvey's confession, TJ has a theory about time travel, Time Travel, hints of Francis/Christian, the siege of Haddington
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-05
Updated: 2020-09-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:47:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26050639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vaznetti/pseuds/Vaznetti
Summary: "I can't get you to the Blitz," TJ said, "but if you want to go to Scotland in 1548 now's your chance."  And he didn't let Colin go alone, either.
Relationships: T. J. Lewis & Colin Templer
Comments: 6
Kudos: 9
Collections: Crossworks 2020





	On Providence

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lirin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lirin/gifts).



The handheld next to Colin's head was buzzing; he reached for it, blinking sleep from his eyes. "Yes?"

It was TJ. "The net will open." He sounded excited. "I can programme a destination in Great Britain."

"In London?"

"No," TJ said after a pause, and Colin could tell from the way his tone changed that the rest wouldn't be good either. "And not the 20th century, either. But if you want to go to Scotland in the 16th century, now's your chance."

"I'll be there." He looked at the clock: it was 3 in the morning, which suggested that TJ had been up all night again trying to get the net to open.

By the time he reached the History Faculty labs, TJ had roused Warder, and a couple people from Wardrobe who might have been postdocs, judging from the argument between them as they showed TJ how to tie together the bits of legging and doublet he was wearing.

"You're going too? Isn't the 16th century a 10?"

"I'm not sending anyone back on a jump I haven't tested. The Scots will just have to cope. Besides, I've been practicing fencing and archery in my spare time. You've been memorising air raids in the Blitz."

"There's no point to going through, anyway," Colin said. "It won't get us any closer to Polly, or to Mr. Dunworthy and Michael and Eileen."

"You don't know that," TJ said. "Time travel is a complex system. Maybe you'll step on a butterfly in Scotland, and when we get back you'll be able to go to London."

"That's not what Ishiwaka theories imply," Colin said. “When are we going? Did anything important happen that year?”

“Badri thinks it might be related to the siege of Haddington, although it’s sending us there a bit early, June of 1548, and the siege was later in the summer,” TJ said. “Anyway, Ishiwaka hasn't spent the last two years working on the net. Badri and I have, and we think there's a difference between what the theory says and how time travel works. And now that it's set to Scotland, it’s stuck there. Someone is going to have to go through. Do you want it to be you or not?"

'I'll go," Colin said, and mustered a grin. "I can't let you go off unsupervised, can I? At least I've been to the middle ages."

TJ, he thought, could tell it wasn't a real smile, but was kind enough not to comment. "Right," he said. "Get dressed, then, while you listen to the subliminal tape."

Three hours later, in hose and a doublet, his head stuffed full of trivia and dialect, Colin watched the veils drop around them. He could barely hear Badri counting down to the jump over the beating of his heart. There was a pause at the end, before the shimmer rose up, and he steeled himself for disappointment. Why should this attempt work, when all the others had failed? At first he thought it was just a trick of the light, the rising sun coming through the blinds. He squeezed his eyes shut; when he opened them the glow was all around them, and the sun was shining on a wall of grey stone. 

He turned to TJ, a cry of, “it worked!” on his lips and saw the same thought on his face. But, “How!” said a voice behind them. “Where’re your helmets and armour, boys? We’re meant to march in an hour. Sluggabeds,” the voice muttered. “Come on now!”

“But...” Colin started. How could the drop have opened when someone could see them? He turned around to see a stocky man, in a breastplate and helmet. His face was red and the skin on his nose was peeling. He didn't look like someone who had just seen two people materialise in a blaze of light, though: his eyes were narrowed and his mouth was pressed thin as he looked them up and down.

“Don’t make a lip at me!” the sergeant — that was what he had to be, Colin thought — said. “Never seen such a set of dullards. You're not the Albanians, are you?”

“I'm from Woolwich,” TJ said.

“They all black like you down in Woolwich?” the sergeant asked.

“Pretty much."

“Good then, Woolwich. Don't you and your friend just stand here like fools. Go on to the armoury and get yourselves fitted out!" He herded them, sheepdog-like, around the corner, and Colin stopped dead: it was mass of shouting men with barrows full of rubble, soldiers in armour leaning against the walls of half-destroyed houses, two men on horseback pushing through the crowd. A huge wall of earth cut through the line of the street, and he could see alleys barricaded with wood and stone. A handful of dogs went running across the street, nearly overturning one of the barrows and setting its handler swearing at them. Everyone seemed to be covered in dust and mud; the smell of sweat and smoke and human waste nearly made him gag. He looked back to make sure he could find the drop again: in the corner between two tall houses, leaning against each other like books placed loosely on a shelf. "Come on now," the sergeant pushed them forward.

An hour later they marched out of Haddington, newly-fitted in dented helmets and breastplates, carrying pikes. “What are we doing? We have to get back into the town,” Colin hissed at TJ. “We need to get back to the drop.” 

“Don’t worry,” he said, “Badri is running a cycle on the drop. Meanwhile I’m testing a theory.”

“A theory? Now?”

“Now is always the best time,” TJ said.

They marched through the countryside as the sun rose to its peak and then began to fall, their own self-contained cloud of dust, the jangle of harness, the crunch of boots and muttered complaints. Colin was already too tired to ask why when the part of the troop they were in split off, trailing after carts and horsemen. Sweat was dripping into his eyes and he stumbled on the uneven ground: they’d left the road as well. The sergeant hurried them along as the sun headed for the horizon, going down toward the same hills that Colin realised they were making for.

They finally came to a halt outside the walls of some kind of large fortified house, but that wasn't the end of it: he and TJ were set to digging just below the walls, from which men appeared periodically to shoot at them. A ball hit the ground a few feet behind them where the sergeant was standing, and although Colin jumped he hardly seemed to notice. The shooting got more frequent as they were made to pile brush into the ditches at the bottom of the outer walls.

"We’ll smoke them out in no time,” the sergeant said as he handed TJ the flint. “Wait for my signal to light the wood.” He strode off to the other piles as TJ fumbled with the flint. “I remember how,” Colin said and took it. “You know this is wrong, don’t you?”

TJ’s face was streaked with sweat and dust. “The dropopened when it did, and sent us through when it did. Why, if slippage exists to prevent incongruities, and if it can shut down completely to protect the timeline? Think about that.” They made their way back to the group while the brush burned, only to be scattered by a bunch of their own horsemen driving cattle back down the road they'd come on. The fire was spreading along the base of the walls. 

Someone shouted, "They're surrendering!" The gate began to open and a few men came out. The troops they were with started to push their way in, into a courtyard full of women and children and unarmed men. It was finally dark as Colin stumbled in, and the mix of fire and smoke made it even darker. Someone screamed, and the soldier next to him used his pike to jab one of the unarmed men; Colin tried to pull him back and was shoved sideways. The sergeant barked something at them: then his eyes widened and he staggered as blood spread over his shoulder. 

The world slowed down and Colin could see the massacre unfolding before him, the men around him lowering their pikes to drive them into the crowd before them. But before it could happen someone next to him cried out: TJ grabbed the sergeant and held him up bodily, shouting at them all to raise their spears and stand back, as a tall woman in a cloak over a white nightgown pushed her way forward in front of the group of Scots and the English commanders rode into the courtyard. 

It was still chaos, people milling about in the smoke and the darkness, the women and children being lifted up into carts and the troops breaking into the house and coming out with chests and cloth and silver. Suddenly Colin saw red hair in the crowd, and the side of a familiar face. "Merope!" he called out. "Merope!" This was it, he realised: the net had sent them here so that he could find Merope, and she could tell him what he'd already done. It was strange to find her here, in Tudor Scotland, but there must be some story behind it. He pushed his way forward until he could reach her arm. "It's me, Colin!"

It wasn't Merope: even in the dark he could see that. It couldn't be some future version of her, either, since this girl was no older than Merope had been when he'd last seen her, long ago in the Oxford of the far future. "Sorry," he said, "I thought--" something impossible, of course. The girl did look like her, though, more than a little. She was staring just past him, and Colin turned to look behind him.

"Let Lady Christian go!" a boy cried, pushing at him.

"Sym, no!" the girl said. "It's all right."

"I won't let him hurt you!"

"I wasn't trying..." Colin began. "I thought... Never mind. Let me help you into one of the carts. Miss," he added, since she seemed like someone important: her cloak was made of velvet, anyway.

She was still staring at him, or rather near him, as if she couldn't see him. "You thought I was someone else," she said. The boy, Sym, was standing very near her, with her hand on his arm. He and Colin both flinched as fire caught the second story of the house, but the girl didn't react. She couldn't see, Colin realised.

"A friend of mine," Colin said. "I don't know why I thought she would be here. Let me lead you over here, away from the crowd."

They made it back to Haddington a few hour after sunrise: the soldiers, a vast herd of cattle and horses, carts of prisoners and furniture. He lost track of the girl who looked like Merope along the way, as the cart she was in outpaced their weary group. The rest of the men found room in a set of tents leaning against a great wall of fresh earth, but and as soon as they could Colin and TJ hurried, still bleary-eyed, to the drop. They piled their pikes and armour by the wall and waited. “Badri was planning a thirty minute cycle,” TJ said. “If I’m right it shouldn’t be long.”

They waited. And waited some more. “Are you sure you aren’t carrying anything new?” Colin asked.

“I’m not,” TJ said, “and you aren’t either.”

“It isn’t going to open, is it? We’re stuck here, like Polly is trapped in the Blitz. We're never going back to Oxford, and we'll be trapped here with the English army all winter, starving and diseased and under constant attack! We must have done something, created an anomaly...”

TJ cut him off. “Or not created one.”

“What?”

TJ looked at the wall, where the drop continued to fail to open. “I don't think there was much slippage on the drop, but their could have been. I told you before, we didn't have to end up on that raid.”

“You think we’re supposed to change history? That’s insane!”

“It’s not insane. I’ve been researching it since the Cathedral -- you weren't there then, but the net went crazy. I think the timeline actually needs paradoxes and incongruities, somehow. It can repair itself, but it needs our help to do it.”

“You’re saying we should interfere more? How do we know what the right thing to do is? How do we keep from making things worse?”

“How did I know to grab sergeant and hold the troop back? I didn’t think. I knew it was the right thing to do, so I did it.”

Colin stares at him. “That sounds suspiciously free of equations for a thesis in time travel theory. What does your supervisor think?”

“I’ve been working with Ishiwaka since the net shut down. He doesn’t believe me but thinks it’s worth testing. And anyway, you’re a historian; you couldn’t understand the equations even if I showed them to you.”

“Then what do we do now? Wait?”

TJ looked at him gravely. “I think so, yes. I know this isn’t where you want to be, but it may be where you need to be.”

"You sound like you think there's some kind of... I don't know, fate, or God, or something, guiding us. Do you really think _this_ is some kind of best of all possible worlds?"

"Not the best of all possible worlds," TJ said, "but it's the one with time travel. Once that exists, the continuum has to preserve itself."

"So we have to come back here, and do something, so that time travel can be invented?" And so that Polly could use it to go to the Blitz, and he could use it to find her, someday. 

"Yes." TJ was silent a while. "But we can't know what that thing is. Just that when we do it, the dropwill reopen."

But that night in the tent, as the snores of the soldiers rose around them, Colin rolled over and whispered to TJ in the next cot. “What if you’re wrong?”

“If I’m wrong, the dropwill never reopen and we’re stuck in 1548. So we might as well do as much good as we can here and now, if that's all we have.”

Doing good was a limited option, Colin thought over the next day, at least when you were a soldier in the Tudor army. Was it good to be building the fortification around Haddington? He had no idea: it was backbreaking, if nothing else, and he fell onto his hard cot that night too tired for even his blisters to keep him awake. TJ had somehow let it slip that he could figure, and had been taken into the basse court, where the stores were kept in a low enclosure just beyond the fortifications, to help count up the booty from the raid, but he hadn't brought Colin in with him yet.

The next day wasn't building: it was drilling with the pike he'd been issued, and walking up and down on the parts of the bastion that had been built. When he climbed down the ladder after hours of that, his thoughts mostly on dinner, the boy who’d been with the girl who wasn’t Merope was waiting for him. “Lady Christian wants to see you,” he said. 

“Why?”

The boy shrugged. “She paid the guard a silver piece to let me come find you, and I've been all over this English fort. Are you coming?”

Her narrow room was nicer than the tent he shared with ten other men, he thought: it had a tall window of small panes of glass and a high ceiling, painted blue. Any ceiling would be better than the tent. Christian was sitting in a patch of afternoon light, her hands folded in her lap. “I wanted to thank you for helping me,” she said. 

“I helped capture you,” Colin said. "I'm not sure you thank people for that."

“Then maybe you’ll be willing to help me now,” she said, "So I will have something to thank you for."

“I can’t help you escape!”

“No,” she said, “of course not. But there’s an Englishman is like to meet. Samuel Harvey. I think he might be here in Haddington. Do you know?”

“I don’t,” Colin said, and as her face fell, added quickly, “but my friend might.” TJ, in the guise of Tom Woolwich, had somehow got to know and be known by at least half the officers and men in Haddington. Even Wilford, the commander at the attack on Dalkeith, had praised him for keeping the hostages alive.

Colin was right. "Harvey? Yes, we met him on the way back here, after the raid. He was wounded in the attack on Edinburgh; I think he’s in the infirmary." And somehow a word or two from him was all it took to let Christian, accompanied by the two of them as guards, out of her room and into the infirmary to see the man she wanted. 

She sat and chatted with him for perhaps half an hour before Harvey's eyes closed. Christian kept talking until he leaned forward and said, "Lady Christian? He's gone to sleep."

"Oh," she said. As he led her back to the room, her hand rested on his arm. "Tell me about your friend," she said. "The one you mistook me for, at Dalkeith."

Colin paused. What did he really know about Merope? She was one of Polly's friends, and trapped with her, and that was the end of his interest, or had been. "She isn't really my friend," he said. "More a friend of a friend."

"Another of the Pleiades?" she asked.

"About as far away," he admitted. 

"You needn't worry: I'm sure you'll be able to see her soon."

Colin sighed. "I hope so," Then he looked at Christian: her face was set and calm, but he wondered suddenly what it was hiding. "You will too, I'm sure. Your people will ransom you, and you'll be home before you know it."

"Perhaps," she said quietly. "For all the good it will do them." They had reached her door. "Will you take me to see Mr. Harvey again tomorrow?"

It became the pattern for the next two days: Colin would be called away from carrying earth and rocks for the fortifications, or training to use his pikes, or counting the sheep brought in by raiders and penned in the basse court. He and TJ would bring Lady Christian to the infirmary, and listen to her talk with Samuel Harvey. 

On the first of those days, Harvey sent her away after only a little while; on the second, though, he was ready to talk. Colin did his best to follow their conversation: forged letters, diplomatic papers, before time travel tracing something like this would have been meat and drink to a historian. It seemed narrow to him as he listened, but maybe that was because all he could focus on was Polly. He shouldn’t be here; he didn't care about 1548.

That wasn't completely true. He didn't really care about Samuel Harvey with his wounded leg and his story about a trick which wrecked the life of a boy younger than he. But he cared about Christian Stewart and her dogged push for the truth of it. He began to listen to the story more carefully, and to watch Christian's face as she heard it repeated once more, as the priest wrote it down. She seemed a reflection of the boy Crawford, trapped far from home and used as a pawn in a war he had no control over. He leaned down to squeeze her shoulder. "You'll make it home," he whispered. He and TJ might not, and Polly and Merope and Michael might be trapped in their own war, but Christian would make it. Somehow, he would see to it.

At the end the priest signed the confession as well as Harvey, who stared down at the pages a long moment before giving Christian a considering look. He shuffled the papers slightly, as if about to tuck them away. TJ stepped forward. “I’ll take those,” he said firmly. “They’ll be kept safe.”

He motioned to Colin to lead Christian out of the room. But instead of going back to the house Christian was kept in he led them through the town and down to the leaning houses and the narrow passage to the alley where the drop still wouldn’t open.

Colin glanced at the wall. “You don’t think it's going to...”

“No,” TJ said. “But I wanted a little quiet when we decide whether I'm going to cut short my promising career in England's army by dabbling in treason."

"What?" he said.

"It's what you need, isn't it?" TJ asked Christian. "Now that you have this statement."

"It isn't fair," Colin said, "that you have a promising career and I don't."

"It's because you're single-mindedly obsessive and I'm naturally authoritative. People trust me, and they like to give me responsibility. Ask Dunworthy, when you see him again." Christian muffled a sound which might have been a snort of laughter. "So?" TJ asked her. "This confession won't help anyone while it stays here."

"I know," she said. "And I'm grateful for your help, but I don't understand _why_ you're going to do this. You said it yourself, it would be treason if you're caught."

"I heard the confession," TJ said. "It was an ugly story. And... let's say I'm testing a hypothesis."

"We're not even going to be stranded here," Colin said. "We'll be executed, and Badri will never know..."

TJ continued as if he hadn't heard. "The thing is, we need to do something soon. Lord Grey is planning to march back to Berwick with you prisoners in a few days. Colin and I don't want to go with them."

"For reasons of your own," Christian supplied. "He's going to send Lady Douglas back to arrange the children's ransom, and mine as well."

"I take it you can't ask her for help," TJ said.

"I'm not sure," she said.

"Right," TJ said. "Here's what I think. Last night was the new moon. If Colin and I can get you and Sym to the edges of the fortifications with a horse, can you get the rest of the way on your own?"

"Aren't you coming with us?" Christian asked. "I thought you didn't want to risk being sent to Berwick."

"We don't want to leave Haddington if we can help it," Colin said. "Can you make it?"

"Sym?" she asked.

The boy frowned. "I don't know, Lady Christian. I don't know the land around here."

"I can draw you a map," Colin offered. "If you head for the coast you can make it to Edinburgh that way." Sym looked doubtful; Colin turned to TJ. "What do you think?"

"I don't know," he admitted. "Maybe they should use the river. Wyndham says that Arran has men at Saltoun Hall, and they can get there if they keep going upstream. It will be easier in the dark, too."

"I can do that," Sym said. "I can follow the river."

"All right," TJ said. "It'll take us a day, maybe two, to get everything you need. Be ready for us to get you tomorrow night, or the night after. We can't wait too much longer than that."

It only took a day: Colin spent it trailing after TJ, amazed by his ability to get what he needed: spare clothing from a store in the middle of the town, a patched rowboat to be tied up under Nungate bridge by one of the Franciscans, in exchange for a sack of wheat from the garrison stores. "It was theirs originally," TJ commented as they went back through the ditch. 

"How do you even know that friar?" Colin asked.

"I've been in to look around once or twice; they're right by the basse court. Most of the friars have gone, and the place had been pretty much looted. I found some of their things and gave them back. Anyway, now it's your turn."

"What do you need?" 

TJ grinned. "That's the spirit. We need to trade shifts with the guards on Christian's townhouse. I've seen you playing dice with the guys in the next tent, and it's their shift tonight. Can you make sure you lose enough times to get it for us?"

"I went to Eton," Colin said. "We learned how to cheat at _all_ the games."

He won a pair of boots of the other tent as well: they could stuff them with rags and give them to Christian to wear, along with the spare clothes TJ had taken from the stores. He and TJ waited outside until it was fully dark and the patrol had just passed them; then he slipped inside with the bundle of clothes and the boots and scratched at Christian's door. He could hear Lady Douglas snoring in the next room. "Help her put them on," he hissed at Sym. "We don't have much time." He'd been to visit a schoolfriend once who lived in Edinburgh; that had been the start of summer vac and it had been light until eleven. Sym and Christian wouldn't have much time on the river before sunrise.

Sym stuck his head out the door. "Lady Christian says to come in." 

The jerkin fell past her hips; she had gathered it up and was trying to tie the baggy hose at her waist. "Do I pass muster?" she asked. "I've left the boots for now: they'll be too noisy in the house."

"Let me help you," Colin said. He knelt down and pulled a strip of fabric from his pouch. "I'm going to tie a garter around each leg, to hold the hose up better. Otherwise you'll trip over your own feet." Her leg was trembling slightly as he pulled the hose up and tied one strap under he knee, and then the other. "It will be all right," he told her. "You'll get out." _And so will we,_ he added silently. He picked up the boots and unlatched the tall window. First Sym climbed out, balancing on the stable roof below, and then Colin passed first Christian and then the boots down to him. He watched them crawl down the the edge of the roof, and watched Sym help Christian down into the space between that house and the next. He held his breath when she stumbled and nearly fell, but she didn't cry out. Then he closed and latched the window and headed back out to the front. "They're out," he said.

"I can hear the patrol in the Tailor's Bastion," TJ said. "They'll be past in a moment." They waited, listening to the men get closer, exchange the watchword, and go on. "Now's the time."

Christian and Sym were waiting in the gap beside their house; there had been something there once, but it had been torn down and presumably used in one of the bastions. Colin and TJ picked their way through the wreckage to them. Once there had been an alley running behind the houses, parallel to the river, but it had been filled in as part of the English defences; they had to climb up the top of the piled earth and stone. Colin crouched down, feeling incredibly exposed. How were they supposed to move unseen along the top of all this rubble? It had seemed like a good plan in the light of day: the alley ran up to the edge of the bastion, and they could climb over it and into the ditch head along that to the bottom of the bulwark. Then it was just a little way past the Franciscans to reach the Nungate Bridge and the boat tied beneath its arches. But now the camp seemed full of movement: he could hear the jangle of horsemen passing somewhere near, and watchmen along the bulwark marching back and forth, calling for the watchword. People in the houses behind them could have seen them easily, if they bothered to look.

He looked behind him, where Christian was kneeling down beside Sym. Her jaw was set, but her remembered how she'd been trembling before. The broken stones had to be cutting into her hands and knees as well, and it would only be worse as they started to crawl. She would have to feel her way around the splinters and rubble. Then he remembered the pictures he'd seen, of London in the Blitz, the shattered houses and streets full of burning wreckage. Would Polly and the rest be trapped, having to travel through the blackout-dark streets to find safety? Would Merope's face have the same determined look Christian's did now? She was beginning to crawl forward: he could hear her suck in a breath as her hands brushed the way in front of her. "Come on," he whispered to TJ, and they all began to move.

It seemed to take forever. They froze whenever they heard the noise of feet, but in the dark between the bulwark and the buildings there was no way to tell where the sound was coming from. He was as blind as Christian, using his hands more than his eyes to find his way along the alley. A cock crowed, back in the camp, and then another, and some dogs began to bark. "Down!" TJ hissed, and they rolled down into the darkness of the ditch. "Stay still!"

Ten or a dozen men on horseback rode past on the other side of the ditch. "Do you think they've realised we're missing?" Colin asked.

TJ shook his head. "That's a bunch of raiders, coming back late. They'll leave the cattle by the basse court, probably."

They hadn't left the cattle in the Basse Court: the animals were crowded in the ditch between the bulwark and the river. The ditch they needed to get through to reach the river, and the boat. As they approached the cattle started to shift against each other and low uneasily. He stepped into something that squelched under his boot. "Crap," TJ said. He started to shove forward through the cattle, who seemed to Colin's eyes unimpressed by the attempt. "Crap," he said again.

"Is that you, Tom?" a voice called. 

Colin froze, and took Christian's hand. He couldn't believe they were about to be discovered by a cowhand.

TJ cursed under his breath a little more. Then, "Peter?" he called back. "Did the laggards leave you in charge here?"

"Aye," Peter called. "Did those blasted Spaniards rouse you to come and lend a hand?"

"Aye, and I've brought help," TJ said, with a quick glance back to check the rest of them. "Open up a pen, and we'll have them in soon enough."

Colin had never tried to herd cattle before: they were big and slow and stubbornly determined to go in any direction other than what he wanted. He stuck close to Christian, shouting and shoving and praying that his feet weren't crushed, and did his best to keep the two of them away from Peter: anyway, he thought, TJ and Sym seemed to have a better idea of what to do. But at the end Peter came back to them, slapping Colin on the back hard enough to rattle his teeth. "Come have a drink! The fire's lit in the watchroom."

"I've got to get these three back to their barrqacks," TJ said. "I'll come get that drink tomorrow, though, if you like." With more backslapping, they headed back toward the wall of the basse court, and into the shadows under the bastion. "Wait here," he said. They watched until Peter went in, and then set out again, staying in the shadows until they reached the priory. "This way."

Christian had one hand on Colin's arm and one on Sym's; he could feel her shaking. "Not long now," he said. "Listen: do you hear the river? It's just beyond the priory wall." Suddenly he realised it wasn't fear: she was trying not to laugh.

"I've never..." she started, and then covered her mouth with her hands to keep from laughing aloud. "I never thought my escape would be covered by a herd of cattle."

He looked at her: her face was smudged with dirt and her hair had slipped out of its plait to hang in limp knots around her. "No one will think you're a valuable prisoner, at least."

She rubbed more dirt onto her face, smiling wide. "Are those apple trees? I smell apples nearby."

"I'm amazed you can smell anything, over the cowshit," he said, and then blushed. "I mean--"

"It's the friars," TJ said. "They have a little orchard on the other side of the wall. We're nearly at the bridge now. Can you make it?"

"Yes," she said. They helped her down into the ditch, and then back up to the riverbank. The darkness seemed friendlier here: something splashed in the water, and a bird called out. There were fires on the far side of the bank, but they seemed to cast shadows more than light, and they walked along the priory wall until they found the path to the bridge. They went a little further, and then doubled back to the edge of the water.

"Here's the boat," TJ said. Colin and Sym lifted Christian down to stand in the mud, and then Sym helped her into the boat and took the pole. "Be quiet as you can for the first bit: there are still English troops about."

"Take this, just in case," Colin said, holding out his helmet and breastplate. He sincerely hoped he wouldn't need them any longer. "You have the papers?" 

"Sewn into my shift," Christian said.

"Good luck," TJ said. It sounded inadequate to Colin, but he couldn't think of anything to add.

"I won't meet you two again, will I?" Christian asked. "Then good luck to you as well, in getting back wherever you belong. And if you don't, if something goes wrong, you have my gratitude. You'll always have a place at my side, both of you."

"How do you know we don't belong here?" he asked.

"Sound is my stock in trade," she said, smiling faintly in the dark. "Your accents gave you away; I knew from the start you weren't really part of the garrison." She turned back to her companion. "Sym, push off: it won't be dark for long."

He stared after her into the night. "It won't be dark for long," he whispered to himself.

"Exactly," TJ said. "Let's go find the drop."

It was the same hidden corner between two tall houses: quiet now, although they could hear some men talking further along by the inner wall. "How long should we wait?" he asked.

"As long as it takes," TJ said. In a few hours there would be men marching back and forth along the wall, and hurrying to the smithy and to the ditches with barrows of stones and clay, and coming back from raids into the countryside, and patrols against raids by the Scots. Christian and Sym would be poling their way up the river as far as they could, or leaving the little boat to walk along the bank. It wasn't many miles to Saltoun Hall, but the sun would be rising before they reached it, turning the black stone walls gold for a moment, then back to grey. Like the walls around him were doing, he suddenly thought, and caught his breath. Not dawn, but a new day, nonetheless. The shimmer of the net rose around them: TJ grabbed him by the shoulder, his face suffused with satisfaction.

A breath, another breath, and they were in the lab.

Epilogue

"I found her," TJ said. 

Colin looked up from the list of events: the net was starting to reopen, but still with gaps and dead zones. London and the Second World War and Polly were all beyond his grasp. "You found Polly?" he asked.

"No, I found Christian Stewart. It took some doing but the records in Edinburgh are still better than ours. The hardest part was persuading the archivists that I was worth listening to; they don't think much of the History Faculty here."

"What happened to her?"

"She obviously made it. I don't think the dropwould have opened if she hadn't. I don't know much else -- they had her will, though, and her husband's. You were right. One of her daughters was a Mary Crawford, and Merope is descended from her. Christian was her great-great-great-something-something grandmother. I don't know how many greats."

"So did that prove your theory?"

"We saved her life, which allowed Merope to be born; maybe we had to do that before you could go back and save her."

"That's ridiculous," Colin protested.

"It's how the continuum protects itself. _One unchangeable course bears along the affairs of men and gods alike_. That's Seneca."

"So Seneca thinks we had to save Merope in 1548 before we could save her in 1940."

"I think we had to save Christian in 1548 so that Merope could _exist_ in order to go to 1940. I don't know what will happen after this."

"So we might still be stuck here, and she and Polly and Michael might be stuck there."

"And all we can do is try to do as much as we can to help them, like we did for Christian Stewart, and hope that it's enough."

"I hope it is," Colin said.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you like this! I've never been to Haddington, and have I'm sure made many mistakes with the geography and history involved in this story. Part of the inspiration here was a Yuletide prompt I saw a long time ago, suggesting that clearly the events of the LC don't lead to our history, but to some alternate world (where for example Mary makes better decisions); maybe it doesn't lead to the world of the OTT universe either, and so someone has to go back and protect the timeline.


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